Neighborhood | Ghost of Midnight

Revealing the good core of a neighborhood

Posted on Thursday, September 3, 2009 by Michael • Comments are off for this post

From Dawn in Burlington’s Old North End…

I am 39 and spent the better portion of my childhood in the ONE. While it had it’s concerns even then, it’s much worse today. However, the core of ONE was good. It seems to be hidden today, but it became clear to me after I found Front Porch Forum that the “core” is still present. It shows in FPF with the support and compassion that is here. I found it comforting to read. I was kind of shocked and a bit saddened upon my return to the neighborhood, but in looking around at the wonderful community building underway on FPF, I’m coming around!!

Attention Surplus and Hyperlocal Advertising

Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 by Michael • 1 comment

From marketing guru Seth Godin today…

There was an attention drought for the longest time. Marketers paid a fortune for TV ads (and in fact, network ads sold out months in advance) because it was so difficult to find enough attention. Ads worked, so the more ads you bought, the more money you made, thus marketers took all they could get.

This attention shortage drove our economy.

The internet has done something wacky to this situation. It has created a surplus of attention. Ads go unsold. People are spending hours on YouTube or Twitter or Facebook or other sites and not spending their attention on ads, because the ads are either absent or not worth watching.

When people talk about the problem with free online, they’re missing the point. Free is creating lots of attention, but marketers haven’t gotten smart enough to do something profitable with that attention…

Big companies, non-profits and even candidates will discover hyperlocal, hyperspecialized, hyperrelevant… this is where we are going, and it turns out that this time, the media is way ahead of the marketers.

And many Front Porch Forum advertisers would agree.

FPF featured on NewGeography

Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 by Michael • Comments are off for this post

NewGeography published Pete Peterson’s piece about Front Porch Forum the other day.

FPF anything but “passive” according to users…

Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 by Michael • 1 comment

Beth’s comment to an earlier blog post here deserves to be featured… wow…

I am on the Westford Front Porch Forum and look at it as the best way to keep up with neighbors, get community information, form new community connections, and have healthy, respectful debates about local issues. In the year and a half I have been on the Forum I have found it helpful in the following ways (this is just off the top of my head):

1. Started a singing group
2.Found a new home for a friend’s dog
3. Debated the merits of town meeting vs. australian ballot
4. Debated the merits gay marriage
5. Been reminded of events at the library such as Women’s Game Night and speakers and then attended these events.
6. Started a local neighborhood watch program
7. learned about musicians coming to the town green
8. Learned what booths will be at the farmer’s market each week.
9. Joined a Westford CSA for local produce
10. Found a neighbor to help carpool to high school with our foreign exchange student.

That is just how I have personally been able to use the Forum. I also get to have an ongoing conversation about everything with my neighbors. I am not a major community organizer. I am just feeling like an active member of my community with this important tool. What is even more telling is that much of Westford does not have high speed internet access. While I know the FPF works fine on dial up, there are people who skip connecting altogether at home because they do not have a high speed option. I only see the FPF expanding as the options for connecting expand.

I talk about the forum at work (which is in Franklin County) and they are intrigued and would like FPF to expand beyond Chittenden.

It actually pains me to read that Brennan Woods is not making good use of the FPF when they have such high participation. It is an opportunity to connect that looks like it is being squandered.

And many others commented about the odd editorial in the Free Press on FPF itself (below), on Twitter, on Facebook, on Free Press online, on this blog, in letters to the editor (we’ll see if the Freeps will run any of them… not yet), and to me directly. From Patricia in Burlington’s Old North End…

I, too, thank City Councilor Marrissa Caldwell for prompt and continued attention regarding the Battery and Pearl crossing. Although I am not in Marrissa’s voting ward, she responded quickly to my first Front Porch Forum posting and continued with the second… The FPF postings also revealed that the whole design of Battery Park at its multiple points of pedestrian entry and exiting needs further attention from the city. Signs stating the Vermont law that cars must yield to pedestrians, speed bumps, and other car traffic calming initiatives were all offered by FPF readers as means to end the thruway mentality.

UPDATES: Good for the Freeps… they published two letters to the editor on Sept. 4 about this. And here’s one FPF member’s response, as posted via FPF to her neighbors…

Today’s Burlington Free Press, in Letters to the Editor, praises the Front Porch Forum for helping us to be informed in a democracy. I second this! Thank you Front Porch Forum, for helping us all, in our media-connected, busy work a day lives, for giving a sense of community.

UPDATE 2: The Free Press just published another piece about this… a My Turn by James Sullivan of Burlington.

“About those house painter recommendations…”

Posted on Thursday, August 20, 2009 by Michael • Comments are off for this post

Kerry posted on Front Porch Forum today in Burlington…

Dear Neighbors – Thank you so much for all the wonderful recommendations that we received for painters. There is nothing like having a recommendation from a neighbor. We thank you and our house thanks you!

That’s lovely. And just now I see that Jeanne followed up with one of her own…

About those house painter recommendations…

Front Porch Forum works well as a community/neighborhood information system. If you are responding to someone’s request for a recommendation, please post the recommendation on Front Porch Forum rather than emailing the recommendation directly to the private email address of the initial query. If the recommendation is openly posted we all can benefit from the advice and it will be in the archives for all to search.

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Free Press: “Front Porch Forum… [is] largely passive.” Not.

Posted on Thursday, August 20, 2009 by Michael • 10 comments

In classic form, the Burlington Free Press published an unsigned editorial today following up a recent piece of its reporting. Topic? Local government should use online social media…

More communities throughout Vermont should make better use of social media if only to keep residents informed and engaged. More people are turning to online services such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to be informed (entertained) and connected.

Local governments must make every effort to be where the people are. The Free Press reports that connection is missing in many towns and cities. Many towns post information on their official Web sites. Some towns also monitor Web-based networks with a hyper-local focus — by streets or neighborhoods — such as Front Porch Forum. But these kinds of online tools are largely passive…

Yes, I agree that local government’s mission is well served when they make effective use of social media. But the reporting and conclusion about Front Porch Forum miss the mark. (In fact, here are two examples of past Free Press articles that reported just the opposite of today’s editorial… here and here.)

For example, in the City of Burlington, 40% of the households subscribe and nearly every city councilor, school board member, and state rep. uses the service. Most Neighborhood Planning Assembly steering committee members partake, as do almost all City departments. In all, 250 local public officials make use of Front Porch Forum in Chittenden County, our pilot region.

And their use of it is anything but passive. A call to City Councilors, like Joan Shannon or Bill Keogh in the South End, would have set the record straight. They, like many other public servants, make frequent use of FPF to engage voters about a wide array of issues.

Further, citizen use of FPF is certainly not passive… that’s who does all the postings… thousand upon thousand of messages are exchanged among clearly identified nearby neighbors through Front Porch Forum (as many of the Free Press reporters and editors should know from personal experience in their own neighborhoods).

“… these kind of online tools are largely passive” — that’s actually a better description of traditional media, e.g., a newspaper, where professionals provide nearly all of the content. On FPF, the content comes from your nearby neighbors.

Finally, “social media” consultants are a dime a dozen these days, and most are telling businesses, governments, nonprofits, etc. the same thing… get into social media and start screaming your message across many different platforms. Anyone deaf yet? It’s growing ever harder to get people’s attention and hold it, let alone to get them to contribute to a discussion. Gratefully, FPF is full of more than 15,000 local people, most of whom are tuned in and making a difference.

UPDATE: An update is posted above.

Hyperlocal news site bought by MSNBC.com

Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 by Michael • 2 comments

The “local” web is all a-buzz today…

From its founder…

EveryBlock has been acquired by MSNBC.com

From the Local Onliner…

While the site takes a unique approach, it is poised to compete with other hyperlocal sites such as Outside.in, Topix.net, Placeblogger and Patch.com (acquired by AOL this summer for $10 million).

From TechCrunch…

EveryBlock currently covers only about 15 cities in the U.S. and comScore estimates its U.S. audience to be only 143,000 unique visitors a month (July, 2009). In contrast, competitor Outside.in attracts 800,000 unique visitors in the U.S. These are relatively small numbers, but these services do a good job of collecting neighborhood news without the expense of actually reporting it.

From Kara Swisher…

MSNBC.com–a joint venture of Microsoft (MSFT) and GE (GE) unit NBC Universal–paid several million dollars for the “hyper-local” information site, which is up and running in 15 cities, including New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Boston, sources said.

In June, Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL paid about $10 million to buy Patch Media.

The New York-based start-up is a platform that does deeply localized coverage of communities on a range of topics, from announcements to news to events to obituaries. It is aimed at competing with local newspapers and other media.

EveryBlock takes a slightly different approach, scouring a mass of publicly available data in a variety of U.S. cities from a variety of public records–such as crime stats, building permits and restaurant inspections–and reassembling them into more comprehensible and geographically relevant news feeds, depending on what a user asks for.

And we’ve been asking the same question as Gotham Gazette…

… anyone familiar with the Knight News Challenge knows about Knight’s open source requirement: projects developed with Knight funding must be released under an open source license — it is one of the terms of funding. EveryBlock released their source code a few months ago, but Biella Coleman posed an excellent question

“Since the code is under a GPL3, doesn’t MSNBC.com have to also keep it under the same license if modified? Or can they take the code base since Everyblock is a web-based service?”

… And, James Vasile at Hacker Visions has an answer. It is a complex answer, and worth a read. Loosely? The holder of the copyright is not necessarily bound by the license a project was released under.

Thousands of people supporting FPF’s mission

Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 by Michael • 2 comments

Thanks to our many supporters, Front Porch Forum is hitting some great milestones…

3 years of serving Chittenden County, VT
15,000 households subscribing, including 40% of our state’s largest city, and more than half of some rural towns
Countless success stories of neighbors helping neighbors
Hundreds of local public officials putting FPF to work
A growing list of awards… and more!

And FPF is growing. More people sign up every day, more postings flow through FPF to neighbors, and we’re expanding to more towns… stay tuned!

Local social media used by local government

Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 by Michael • 2 comments

Matt Sutkoski writes in the Burlington Free Press today about how local governments in Vermont are using — or NOT using — Facebook and Twitter. And he takes a look at another tool of choice… Front Porch Forum.

Vermont towns and cities have not joined the herd to embrace social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Millions of individuals have accounts on the two sites, which enable people to trade comments, updates and information. Many businesses consider Facebook and Twitter de rigueur for marketing and communicating with their audiences.

Many managers and clerks in Vermont municipalities have not found a good reason to get on the Twitter and Facebook bandwagon. However, some cities and towns have found a more local social Web site, Front Porch Forum, more useful.

Front Porch Forum enables people in specific towns or neighborhoods to communicate via the Web with each other and provide updates. Many of the entries announce block parties, warn of car break-ins, ask questions on where to get services or comment on neighborhood issues.

“I look at each time it’s published, and basically I monitor it for problems,” Colchester Town Manager Al Voegele said. If an issue is causing a lot of discussion, he’ll discuss it with a town department head who would deal with that type of issue and see whether the town can help solve it, he said. Voegele said he sometimes comments on Front Porch Forum to clarify and explain issues affecting the neighborhoods.

Other communities, such as Williston and South Burlington, also frequently monitor or post comments on Front Porch Forum…

Click here for the full article.

Neighborhood Boundaries and Maponics

Posted on Friday, August 14, 2009 by Michael • Comments are off for this post

Vermont’s Maponics continues to develop its wares…

Yesterday we announced the launch of the Maponics Neighborhood Classification Schema™, a new feature embedded within the Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries™ database. Read our news release here!

With this, we are thrilled to have expanded the depth of our neighborhood boundaries database and made it more powerful for companies looking to target or filter out neighborhoods with specific characteristics.

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